U.S. President George Bush says, despite Washington's frustration with the slow pace of political progress in Iraq, it is up to Iraqis to decide the future of their government. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, the president is responding to an influential U.S. Senator who says Iraq's parliament should dismiss Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.The chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee says Mr. Maliki's government cannot achieve a political settlement, because it is too bound by its own sectarian prejudices. Michigan Senator Carl Levin wants Iraq's parliament to remove Mr. Maliki's government, because he says it has "totally and utterly failed."
Speaking at a news conference, President Bush replied that it is up to the Iraqi people to determine the future of their government, not American politicians.
| And that's the rub, isn't it? It's their country, and within certain limits they're free to screw it up the way they please. We don't live there, and our politicians aren't in charge there. The great hope we had for the Muddle East was that we would be able to nudge them into "democracy." The fundamental problem we had with that was one of definition: to us it's been a mostly mutually understood shorthand for "individual liberty." Democracy by that definition is a symptom, not a cause. It's a way for free men to govern themselves. In the horrible caricatures of democracy that have been grown in the mutant garden of post-colonialism, we've seen things purporting to be democracy that feature things like
It would be to the advantage of the oppressed common folk to throw off these systems, but we forget that it's a frightening thing for them, too, even the ones who're capable of formulating the idea. In Iraq there is a tradition that literally dates to the dawn of civilization of The Masses™ being at the service of the rulers. That was the mechanism by which we came to have civilization in the first place. Iraqis after 5500 to 6000 years of this are by now conditioned to being ruled, not governed. In their own minds they need to be told what to do, whether it be by the tribal sheikh, by a clan elder, by Sargon II, or by Moqtada al-Sadr. Islam flourishes in countries like that, because it has rules for everything, to include peeing, pooping, and other activities that we in the West didn't used to discuss in mixed company. You never have to worry about what to do next because somebody's already told you, or is willing to tell you. Is there a possibility of individual liberty in that kind of society? Not while they're living in thrall to Islam. The Islamic Masses™ are denied the fundamental right to change religion, which means they don't have any true freedom of thought. From freedom of thought flows all other freedoms. Probably the best we can hope for is fair-minded and benevolent rulers, not expressing the People's Will, but doing what's best for them. As a matter of our own state policy we should probably be looking for them right now and providing them with the means to impose their will. |